RESOURCES

Major New Study Proves Organic is Best!

I‘m not sure why this is still an issue, but we continue to see debates about whether organic foods are really better than foods grown using chemical industrialized agriculture. To me, the common sense here is blatantly obvious. When you consider that the soil is permeable and that plants absorb their nutrients from the soil, then it’s highly likely that they’re also absorbing the toxin filled synthetic herbicides and pesticides being sprayed on them. In fact, the evidence is quite clear that this is the case. Have you seen the studies about umbilical cords and newborns?

And that for me, is the first benefit of consuming organically grown foods; that you're not ingesting these toxic substances and overburdening your body by forcing it to deal with these toxins. The other benefit of consuming organic foods involves the nutrients. Since organic, and especially biodynamic methods of farming, treat the soil as a living entity and focus on increasing the nutrients in the soil, the plants grown in that soil will likely have a higher nutrient content compared to those grown with chemical agriculture.

A new study, one of the largest of its kind has now confirmed this. In fact, Carlo Leifert, professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University in the UK who led the study says “the evidence from this study is overwhelming”. The study, which was a meta analysis of previous publications, found that organically grown foods were 69% higher in key antioxidants, had significantly lower levels of toxic metals, and had significantly lower levels of nitrogen and its derivatives like nitrites.

This study, which was recently published in the prestigious British Journal of Nutritioncontradicts the findings of a 2009 study by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA), that found no significant nutritional benefits between foods grown organically and foods grown through chemical industrialized agriculture. The FSA study was based on only 46 publications, while the Newcastle study is based on data from 343 peer reviewed publications.

Although this is likely not the end of this debate, the more information that comes out, the more it seems to support the benefits of organic and biodynamic methods of farming, both in terms of protecting the environment, the soil and the water as well as protecting human health. Common sense can only be ignored for so long, before science catches up to it!